qdbus and qdbusviewer crash with "No such file or directory"

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I have solve this problem on Ubuntu 13.10 via command:
sudo apt-get install qt5-default qttools5-dev-tools

Same problem on Ubuntu 17.10, I think it's a bug.

The solution is indeed to install the qt5-default package.

Maybe this package could be added as a dependency in newer releases?

There is also perhaps an upstream bug where qtchooser could try the "other" qt version if one fails. (I had installed qdbus5, and qtchooser was trying qdbus4, which was not installed or wanted.)

> Maybe this package could be added as a dependency in newer releases?

We would like to make Qt 5 default, but unfortunately this will break lots of legacy Qt 4 code. So we cannot do that soon, maybe in future...

> There is also perhaps an upstream bug where qtchooser could try the "other" qt version if one fails. (I had installed qdbus5, and qtchooser was trying qdbus4, which was not installed or wanted.)

The fallback mechanism exists (in qtchooser 52-gae5eeef and newer versions), but only for some tools: <https://code.qt.io/cgit/qtsdk/qtchooser.git/tree/src/qtchooser/main.cpp#n528>. qdbus is one of them, so if you have qdbus-qt5 installed, qtchooser will use it even if you have no qt5-default package installed. If that is not the case, please let us know your qtchooser version and the console output.

Because this is top post being shown in Google search for problems with qdbusviewer and they persist also on 18.04 here is the solution:

1. Find an error message. In my case (even after installing default):

    qdbusviewer: could not exec '/usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbusviewer': No such file or directory

2. Find in which package is file being reported as missing:

    $ apt-file search /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbusviewer
    qttools5-dev-tools: /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbusviewer

3. Install found package:

   $ sudo apt install qttools5-dev-tools

Voila!

It's 2021, and this issue still exists.
In my case with qdbus command, installing and re-installing qt5-default does not help.
The solution of @yatsek worked:

qdbus: could not find a Qt installation of ''

$ sudo apt-get install apt-file

$ sudo apt-file update

$ apt-file search /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbus
qdbus-qt5: /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbus
qtbase5-dev-tools: /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbuscpp2xml
qtbase5-dev-tools: /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbusxml2cpp
qttools5-dev-tools: /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbusviewer

$ sudo apt-get install qdbus-qt5

Voila!

Problem still exist in kubuntu 22.04 as of 21/11/25

qttools5-dev-tools is the package that provides the applications

apt tells the user this

user@kde-test-system:~$ qdbusviewe
Command 'qdbusviewe' not found, did you mean:
  command 'qdbusviewer' from deb qtchooser (66-2build1)
Try: sudo apt install <deb name>

qtchooser is installed ad you get the error

user@kde-test-system:~$ qdbusviewer
qdbusviewer: could not exec '/usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbusviewer': No such file or directory

this should at lease give a error saying that you need the qttools5-dev-tools package

And here we go again... - also with qdbusviewer, and also on 18.04

Previous workaround stopped working.

After some digging it looks that qtchooser is looking into wrong Qt dir (qt4 instead of qt5)

Some other people reported that

    apt install qt5-default

may help - but I did not check this

What worked was editing

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt-default/qtchooser/default.conf

and adding first line so it looks like this:

==== /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt-default/qtchooser/default.conf ====
/usr/lib/qt5/bin
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
==== EOF ====